Detective Littleton spoke for the first time, her tone hesitant. “There’s one more thing we wanted to ask you about—” Leigh blinked back the tears burning her eyes and forced herself to look at the brunette. “This morning, Officer Borowski came back on duty after his regular days off, and he notified us that you reported a stalker in September. It was Officer Borowski who took down the information, and he thought we ought to know. Has the problem continued?”
Leigh’s heart began to thud in deep, terrified beats that resounded up and down her body, and fear made her voice shake so badly it was nearly inaudible. “Are you thinking that a stalker ran me off the road, or that he might have done something to my husband?”
“No, no, not at all,” Detective Littleton said with a warm and reassuring smile. “We’re only trying to be helpful. The main roads are clear now, and the side roads are being cleared. Phone and electric service has been reinstated except in a very few isolated areas where they’re still working on the lines. Your husband is bound to turn up any minute now. We thought you might like us to see what we can find out about the identity of your stalker while we’re still working with you. If you don’t want us to—”
“I’d appreciate it if you would,” Leigh said, clinging to Detective Littleton’s explanation because she wanted to believe it.
“What can you tell us about your stalker?”
Leigh described the events that had worried her.
“You said he sent you orchids,” Littleton said when Leigh finished. “Have you looked at any of the cards on these flowers?”
“No.”
Littleton stood up and went to the white orchids first. “They’re from Stephen Rosenberg,” she said, reading the card.
“He’s one of the backers of the play,” Leigh told her.
One by one, Littleton began reading Leigh the messages and names on the other cards. When she was halfway through, she nodded toward the stacks of phone messages and telegrams on Leigh’s nightstand. “Have you looked those over carefully?”
“Most of them,” Leigh said.
“Would it be all right if Detective Shrader goes through them while I’m doing this?”
It was fine with Leigh, but Shrader didn’t look very enthusiastic as he began going through the stack. When the name on the last bouquet was also one Leigh recognized, Littleton picked up her jacket and Shrader stood up, too, trying to finish his own task on his feet. He was reading one of the last messages when his entire attitude underwent a sudden, unpleasant transformation. He stared at Leigh, studying her as if seeing her in an entirely new, and unflattering, light. “So, I guess Michael Valente is a good pal of yours?”
The expression on his face, and even on Littleton’s, made Leigh feel soiled by association.
“No, he is not,” Leigh stated emphatically. “I met him for the first time at a party celebrating the play’s opening Saturday night.” She didn’t want to say more, didn’t want to mention that the party had been at her home, and she especially didn’t want them to know that Logan had been discussing a business deal with Valente. She didn’t want to say anything to make these detectives think Logan was anything but a thoroughly upright businessman and loving husband who was missing. Which he was.
Both detectives seemed to accept her explanation. “I imagine you attract a lot of creeps and kooks when you’re a big star,” Shrader said.
“It goes with the job,” Leigh said, trying to joke and failing miserably.
“We’ll let you get some rest now,” he said. “You have our cell phone numbers if you need to reach us. We’re going to try following your map again. Normally, it’s easy to locate the site of an accident like yours, but there’s so much snow piled up along the sides of the road that it’s difficult to spot the indications we’re looking for.”
“Call me if you find out anything—anything at all,” Leigh pleaded.
“We will,” Shrader promised. He held his temper in check while Littleton stopped at the nurses’ station and asked about the card that was missing from the basket of pears. He held his temper while the nurse looked for it and couldn’t find it, but when he reached the bank of elevators, he unleashed it on Sam. “What you did in there was completely senseless! You scared the shit out of her with that stalker crap. She didn’t buy your reasons for asking. She knew exactly what you were thinking.”
“She’s not stupid. Pretty soon she’d have remembered him, and then she’d have been terrified that he could be responsible for what’s happened,” Sam retorted. “It’s better that she knows we’ve already thought of it and are following up.”
“Following up what?” he scoffed. “Her stalker is still in the romantic, gift-giving stage, which is probably where he’ll stay until someone else catches his eye. Secondly, stalkers aren’t spontaneous—they fantasize about the moment they’ll come out in the open. They plan and they fantasize, and they don’t like deviating. They don’t decide to make their move in the middle of an unexpected, unpredictable blizzard, unless they could plan for that, too—which is not possible.”
The arrival of the elevator distracted him, and when Sam saw that it was empty, she tried to explain her reasoning. “Don’t you find it odd that her husband vanished on the same night that she was nearly killed—and then mysteriously rescued? That’s just too many coincidences.”
“Are you suggesting one stalker is behind all that? How many stalkers do you think she has?”
Sam ignored his sarcasm. “I think it’s possible he could have been following her when he saw her car go over the embankment, and he stayed there to rescue her.” Once she said it aloud, Sam wished she hadn’t, because even to her it sounded ludicrous.
“That’s your theory?” he mocked. “A stalker who turns into a knight in shining armor?” Without waiting for a reply, he said, “Now, let me give you my theory: Manning got stuck in the blizzard and for one reason or another, he can’t get out. Mrs. Manning lost control of her car in the same blinding snowstorm and went off the road. Here’s why I like that theory: The same thing happened to hundreds of people in that blizzard on Sunday! Here’s why I don’t like your theory: It’s improbable. In fact, it’s outlandish. In short, it sucks.”
Instead of resenting his accurate summation, Sam looked at him for a moment, and then she laughed. “You’re right, but please don’t soften your opinions for my sake.”
Shrader was a man, therefore being “right” was both a compliment—which immediately improved his mood—and also a very high priority. “You should have discussed your theory with me before you inflicted it on Mrs. Manning,” he pointed out, but in a more pleasant voice.
“I didn’t develop it until after we got here,” Sam admitted as the elevator doors opened on the first floor. “It was the pears that finally sent me in that direction. They represent a personal knowledge of her habits—‘insider’ information—and there wasn’t a card with them. Then, when I saw how strongly Mrs. Manning reacted to them . . .”
“She told you why she reacted that way.”
They were already partway across the lobby when Sam decided to make a detour, which Shrader incorrectly assumed was to the ladies’ room. “I’ll meet you at the car,” she told him.
“Prostate trouble?” he joked. “You already stopped on the way upstairs.”
Sam walked over to the reception desk, where several new floral arrangements were waiting to be delivered to patients’ rooms. She showed her badge to an elderly volunteer with blue tinted hair and a name tag that said she was Mrs. Novotny. “Was a big basket of pears delivered here this morning?” Sam asked her.
“Oh, yes,” the volunteer said. “We were all marveling at the size of those beautiful pears.”
“Did you happen to notice the truck or car that delivered them?”
“As a matter of fact, I did. It was a black car—the kind movie stars drive—I know, because two teenagers were sitting right over there at the time, and they were admiring it. One boy said it cost at least three
hundred thousand dollars!”
“Did they mention what kind of car it was?”
“Yes. They said it was a . . .” She paused, deep in thought, and then she brightened. “They said it was a Bentley! I can describe the man driving it, too: He was wearing a black suit and a black hat with a visor on it. He carried the pears in here and put them on my desk. He said they were for Mrs. Leigh Manning, and he asked me to please see that she gets them as soon as possible. I told him I would.”
Sam felt completely foolish for obsessing over what was obviously an innocuous basket of expensive fruit delivered in a chauffeur-driven Bentley. Shrader had been totally right. “Thank you very much, Mrs. Novotny, you’ve been very helpful,” Sam assured her automatically, because she thought it was important to make every cooperative citizen feel as if they’d been valuable. It was a way of saying “thank you for being willing to get involved.”
Mrs. Novotny was so flattered that she tried to be even more helpful. “If you want to know anything else about the man driving that car, you could ask the person who sent the pears, Detective.”
“We don’t know who sent them,” Sam said over her shoulder. “There was no card with them.”
“The envelope fell off.”
Something about the way she said that made Sam stop and turn.
Mrs. Novotny was holding a square envelope in her hand. “I was planning to send this upstairs to Mrs. Manning with a volunteer, but they’ve been busy all morning. Almost all the beds here are filled because of the blizzard. Lots of folks fell, or got in car wrecks, or had heart attacks from shoveling snow.”
Sam thanked her profusely, took the envelope, and continued across the lobby. She opened the envelope, not because she expected to discover anything meaningful inside it, but because she’d already embarrassed herself with Shrader and upset Mrs. Manning over the basket of fruit that it should have been attached to. She removed a small folded sheet of engraved stationery from the envelope and read the handwritten message on it. Then she stopped in midstride. And read it twice more.
Shrader had gotten their car out of the lot and it was at the curb just outside the main doors. Puffs of exhaust were pumping out of the tailpipe and a hard, thin coat of frost had already built up on the windshield. He was scraping it off with his credit card—an entertaining procedure with the windshield wipers running at top speed and his knuckles bare. She waited in the car until he got in and began blowing on his cold hands and rubbing them together; then she offered him the folded note. “What’s that?” he asked between puffs on his fingers.
“The note that came with Mrs. Manning’s pears.”
“Why are you giving it to me?”
“Because you’re cold,” she said, “and I think this will . . . electrify you.”
Shrader clearly thought that was unlikely, and he demonstrated that opinion by ignoring the note and continuing to rub his hands together. When he finished, he put the Ford into gear, looked in the rearview mirror, and pulled away from the curb. Finally, he reached for the note, casually flipped it open with his thumb, and as they neared a stop sign at the pedestrian crosswalk, Shrader finally allotted it a sideways glance.
“Holy shit!” He slammed down on the brake so hard that Sam’s seat belt locked and the rear end of the car fishtailed on the icy drive. He read it again, then he slowly lifted his big dark head and gazed at her, his brown eyes bright with wonder and anticipation—a very happy rottweiler who’d just been given a juicy sirloin. He shook his head as if to clear it. “We’ve got to call Captain Holland,” he said, pulling the Ford over to the curb. Chuckling silently, he punched numbers on his cellular phone. “What a coup, Littleton! If Logan Manning doesn’t show up soon—healthy and hale—you’ve just handed NYPD a case that’s going to make you a heroine and Holland the next police commissioner. Commissioner Trumanti will be able to die a happy man.” Into the phone he barked, “This is Shrader. I need to talk to the captain.” He listened for a moment, then said, “Tell him it’s an emergency. I’ll hold on.”
He took the phone away from his ear long enough to press the mute button; then he announced, “If you weren’t already Holland’s fair-haired angel, you’d be that from now on.”
Sam suppressed a jolt of alarm. “What do you mean, I’m his ‘angel’?”
Shrader gave her an abject, hangdog look. “Forget I said that. Whatever is between you and Holland is none of my business. It’s real clear now, though, that you’ve got more going for you than just your looks. You’ve got tremendous instincts, you’ve got tenacity, you’ve got ability! That’s what matters.”
“What matters to me at this moment is that you implied Captain Holland has some sort of partiality for me, and I want to know why you think that.”
“Hell, everybody at the Eighteen thinks that!”
“Oh, gee, that makes me feel much better,” she said sarcastically. “Now answer my question or I’ll show you ‘tenacity’ like you have never—”
The person on the other end of the phone said something, and Shrader held up his hand to silence Sam’s outburst. “I’ll hold on,” he said; then he looked at Sam, gauging the degree of determination in her facial expression, and decided he believed her threat. “Consider the evidence,” he said, after pressing the mute button again. “You’re a rookie detective, but you wanted Homicide at the Eighteen and you got Homicide. We’ve got cases coming out the wazoo, but Holland doesn’t want to give you any of those cases; he wants a nice clean case to start you out on. You need a permanent partner, but Holland won’t assign you to just anybody. He wants to pick your partner personally—”
Sam grasped at the only lame explanation she could come up with at the moment. “Holland is handling assignments for everyone right now, since Lieutenant Unger’s position is still open.”
“Yeah, but Holland hasn’t assigned you to a partner, because he wants to make sure your partner is someone real nice, someone you’re ‘compatible’ with.”
“Then how could he have picked you?”
Shrader grinned at her gibe. “Because he knows I’ll ‘look out for you.’ ”
“He told you to look out for me?” Sam gaped at him in shocked disgust.
“In exactly those words.”
She digested that for a moment; then she shrugged in pretended disinterest. “Well, if that’s all it takes to make everyone think there’s something odd going on, then you’re all a bunch of gossipy old women.”
“Give us a break, Littleton. Take a look at yourself—you’re not exactly the typical female cop. You don’t swear, you don’t get mad, you’re too proper and ladylike, and you don’t look like a cop.”
“You haven’t heard me swear,” Sam corrected him, “and you haven’t seen me get angry yet, and what’s wrong with the way I look?”
“Nothing. Just ask Holland and some of the other guys at the Eighteen—they think you look real fine. Of course, the only other female detectives at the Eighteen are a lot older than you and fifty pounds heavier, so they don’t have a lot to compare you with.”
Sam shook her head in disgust and hid her relief, but his next statement jarred her and ended that momentary respite. “Since you want to know the whole truth,” he said, “according to the grapevine over at headquarters, you’ve got some sort of clout—friends in high places—something like that.”
“That’s just typical,” Sam said, managing to look scornfully amused. “Whenever a woman starts succeeding in a male-dominated profession, you guys would rather attribute her success to anything, anything, except ability.”
“Well, you got plenty of that,” Shrader shocked her by saying; then he broke off abruptly as Holland finally took his call and evidently began by chewing Shrader out for holding on and running up his cellular phone bill.
“Yes, sir, Captain, I know—probably five minutes. Yes, sir, Captain, but Detective Littleton discovered something I felt you’d want to know about immediately.”
Since Shrader was the senior det
ective on the case, and also “in charge of her,” Sam expected him to take some sort of credit for her discovery, or at least to claim the satisfaction of telling Holland about it himself, but to Sam’s surprise, Shrader handed the phone to her with a wink. “Holland says this had better be good.”
By the time Sam disconnected the call, she had no doubt that Captain Thomas Holland thought her information justified an expensive phone call.
In fact, he thought it warranted the full and immediate use of all of the NYPD’s available personnel and resources.
“Well?” Shrader said with a knowing grin. “What did Holland say?”
Sam handed his phone back to him and summarized the conversation. “Basically, he said that Mrs. Manning is going to get more help from the NYPD in the search for her husband than she ever imagined.”
“Or wanted,” Shrader said flatly. He glanced up at the hospital in the general direction of the third floor and shook his head. “That woman is one hell of an actress! She fooled me completely.”
Sam automatically followed his gaze. “Me, too,” she admitted, frowning.
“Cheer up,” he advised her as they pulled away from the curb. “You’ve made Holland a happy man, and by now, he’s on the phone with Trumanti, making the Commissioner a happy man. By tonight, Trumanti will make the mayor a happy man. The biggest problem for all of us,” he said as he put the car into gear, “will be keeping what we’ve got a secret. If the Feds get wind of it, they’ll try to find some way to muscle in on the case. They’ve been trying to nail Valente on a dozen charges for years, but they can never make them stick. They aren’t going to be happy when the NYPD succeeds where they’ve failed.”
“Isn’t it a little too early for all this ecstasy?” Sam said. “If Logan Manning turns up alive and well, there is no ‘case.’ ”